Connected Discourses in Gandhāra:
An Edition, Study, and Translation of Four Saṃyuktāgama-Type Sūtras from the Senior Collection.

A Revised version of this work will be published by the University of Washington Press at the end of 2007

This study investigates the relationships between the newly discovered Saṃyuktāgama-type sūtras preserved in the Senior Collection
and the other extant versions of the Saṃyuktāgama/Saṃyutta-nikāya, principally those in Pāli and Chinese. This has been done in two ways:
first, through a broad examination of the arrangement of the available texts preserved in their various collections (chapter 1),
and second, through a detailed comparison of the contents of four sūtras preserved together on scroll 5 with their Pāli, Chinese and Tibetan
parallels (chapter 2). The first of the four sūtras I have called the “S̱aña-sutra,” based on its contents, namely, a description of four visualization
exercises, termed ‘perceptions’ (Gāndhārī s̱aña). While the subject matter of this sūtra is familiar, the descriptions of all but the ﬁrst perception
are new. As such, only partial parallels to this sūtra have been identified in Pāli and Tibetan. The remaining sūtras have close parallels Pāli
and Chinese. There is also a quotation parallel to the second sūtra in Tibetan. The rest of this dissertation comprises a study of these four
sūtras in yet greater detail following the established practice of other recent studies of Gāndhārī manuscripts (GBT 1–3), and includes:
a physical description of the manuscript (chapter 3), paleography and orthography (chapter 4), phonology (chapter 5), morphology (chapter 6),
transcribed text, reconstruction, and translation (chapter 7), and a detailed edition of each sūtra together with parallel versions and detailed
comments (chapters 8–11). Appendices provide editions and translations of the parallel texts in Pāli, Chinese and Tibetan. There is also a
complete word index to the Gāndhārī text.